With all the high profile event cancellations I’m a bit surprised there’s no discussion here.
We are in regular communication with the conference hotel as well as monitoring CDC and government recommendations. The conference is moving forward as scheduled. As Tim said, please contact us with any questions.
I’m very excited, after all these years, to get to my first Xojo conference! I do think we need to establish some etiquette, though, and agree on whether we’re bumping elbows, waving or doing the… footshake? Looking forward to seeing everyone.
Looking forward to see you. We may keep distance and maybe not shake hands, but otherwise hope for a great conference!
And if someone feels sick, please stay in the hotel room or home and get well soon.
While I am not going to the conference, I urge all of you who are signed up to go and I urge Xojo not to cancel it. This virus thing is over-hyped and everyone is running scared and panicking and they don’t need to be. There are far worse things to get and you likely have a bigger chance of being injured or worse from being hit by a car while attending the conference than you do from picking up the virus at the conference. Have some prospective and enjoy life and the conference.
Not to be a buzz kill, but the latest I have heard from Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert, is that this virus is currently believed to be a bit worse than flu and spreads in the same fashion, through the air. It’s also possible for people without symptoms to be contagious. His outlook on the matter is that it’s going to get worse and there currently is not much that can be done other than limit the spread as much as possible.
I don’t know how many people plan to be attending the conference, but I would encourage anyone who is not in good health or has any significant underlying risk factors to do their own research and weigh the decision carefully. Even though I suspect the Xojo community is composed of highly responsible people who would not attend if they had any suspicion of being contagious, traveling through airports and on planes is a big unknown and well outside your control.
The Differences Between the Coronavirus and the Spanish Flu w:Michael Osterholm
The Xojo conference itself I assume is relatively small, so in and of itself would not be that much of a danger…
But at this time based on what has been said by the CDC, I would suggest that everyone over 60 really think hard about air travel even if they are healthy. The consequences of getting the virus become more significant with age.
While the illness is not as serious for those those younger, if they become infected they can also infect older people living with them or whom they visit (like their parents)…
I assume you all have heard about the aftermath of the Biogen conference here in the Boston area…
Just something to think about.
-karen
I think I’d be classified as higher risk for this thing (over 50 with asthma), and I have every intention of showing up.
source Mythbusters
If you suffer from any kind of pre-existing condition, esp a respiratory one, you should seriously think about the risks
How close to New Rochelle do you live ?
There’s a fairly large cluster there
Some actual (and hypothetical) #s:
- Annual pedestrian fatalities in USA: about 6000.
- Annual flu deaths in USA: about 60000.
- COVID-19 deaths - extreme worst-case estimates are that 70% of people could get it with a 3% fatality rate, which gives 320,000,000 * .7 *.03 = over 6 million deaths in the USA.
In other words, you are about 10x more likely to die of the flu than get hit by a car, and you may be up to 1000x as likely to die of COVID-19 than get hit by a car.
Also, remember that COVID-19’s death rate is as much as 10x to 15x higher in aged 70 and up.
To use less scary data, we can look at Italy’s current status:
- Italy data: Italy COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer
- as of right now, Italy has 600 deaths from a population of about 60 million, equivalent to a USA death rate of about 3600 - so, as of today, roughly comprable to the risk of getting hit by a car.
- By tomorrow it will be higher. The graph is clearly on the upswing of the exponential - they will probably have 5x to 10x more deaths before this is over, so it’s quite likely that coronavirus is at least 10x as deadly as cars.
Tons of caveats here - pedestrian deaths are per year, whereas the covid stats are only spread over a few weeks.
In my opinion, sayiing “don’t worry, your risk is low” isn’t good advice because (A) it’s likely to be statistically incorrect, and (B) may lead people to fail to behave in ways consistent with public health recommendations.
The main problem with with this pandemic disease is not the fact that you may get ill or in worst case could get killed. People will die. That’s a fact. The only challenge is to prevent a collapse of national health services.
Regarding to XOJO Con. In Aviation there is a another mortal disease. It’s called “Get-there-itis” when poor decisions and compromises are made due operational factors or costs or mental stress.
Actually, Michael, your math is technically correct, but misleading. The mortality rates of COVID 19 are estimated much below that of influenza if you exclude the 70+ age group.
the influenza mortality rate in the USA according to the CDC is about 6 - 7 % in 2020
The COVID 19 mortality rate as currently known and published by the WHO is:
- 10-39 year old: 0.2 %
- 40-49 year old: 0.4%
- 50-59 year old: 1.3%
- 50-69 year old: 3.6%
- 70-79 year old: 8%
- 80+: 14.8%
COVID 19 seems to be more contagious than influenza (R0 = 2.2 vs 1.3 for influenza). So, it poses a greater risk of epidemy. With a lesser mortality rate in percentage. There is currently no vaccine against COVID 19.
All in all, we need to be careful with COVID 19 contagion, but we should not yield to mass hysteria.
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. Yes, but not today.
edit: more than 80% of confirmed COVID19 confirmed cases are classified as mild and do not require any special care. (other than stay away from other people!)
Michael,
Those estimates are based on what we know of in terms of reported cases. The vast majority of cases are in those who are well over 70 years old. The average age of reported cases is something like 80 years old. The virus barely affects young people.
I personally believe that the infection rate is much, much, much higher than anyone knows. People get it and basically get the symptoms of a bad cold or mild flu. They never feel bad enough to go to their doctor and get tested. I know of two people who last week had a couple days sick where their symptoms were exactly like Covid-19. But both recovered after a couple days and are fine. I believe that this is happening far, far more often than not. If I am right, then the mortality rate is far, far lower.
Yes. Life is fatal. We all die.
Enjoy life and stop worrying about when your time is up. When it’s up - it’s up. Period. If we spent our whole life in fear about what might happen to us, we’d never leave our homes. But we don’t. We participate in things every day that someone someplace dies doing. We walk the streets, fly in airplanes, drive cars, etc. People get the flu and die from the flu.
We’ve survived SARS, MERS, H1N1, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Zika, etc. Every couple years it’s a new panic. We adapt, we move forward.
It’s called life…
- almost all.
What? Your number is 50x high - to use 2018 stats, there were estimated 45,000,000 flu infections with 61,000 deaths, a fatality rate of 0.13% See Disease Burden of Flu | CDC
Are you perhaps confusing this with the % of people infected or some other statistic?
We don’t know alot, but there are some numbers we are pretty sure of. Some of your numbers are just plain wrong.
[quote=478718:@Jon Ogden]Michael,
Those estimates are based on what we know of in terms of reported cases. The vast majority of cases are in those who are well over 70 years old. The average age of reported cases is something like 80 years old The virus barely affects young people.[/quote]
Simply not true. Did you mean “the vast majority of deaths”? That would be true.
This is plausible, and what evreryone is hoping for - in other words, it would be great if the # of actual infections is much much hither than the # of confirmed and reported infections. We hope the denominator of that fraction (# deaths / # infections) is way off.
But hope and personal anecdotes are not data…
Who exactly is hyping it up? WHO just officially called it a global pandemic. Are you saying it’s not? Whom should I believe, internet stranger or the WHO which is backed by competent doctors and scientists who study this every day?
Let’s be rational here and not spread medical advice based on one’s “gut feeling”, or even the words of some TV network’s talking heads.
As for why this may be a really big problem for the United States, I offer this look back in time:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/03/health/cdc-slashes-global-epidemic-programs-outrage/index.html
[quote=478724:@Michael Diehr]
But hope and personal anecdotes are not data…[/quote]
the USA has been woefully behind in testing for covid-19 to accumulate that data